


Paroxysm

by heartstrickledown



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-08
Updated: 2010-07-08
Packaged: 2017-10-10 11:16:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartstrickledown/pseuds/heartstrickledown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Vietnam. Comedian/His canon ladies. The Comedian does not have the smoothest transition from 'Nam to the States.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paroxysm

  
  
  
  


  
  
  
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**Warnings:** Racial prejudice and misogyny, excessive violence and cursing, drug and alcohol abuse, phantom!mpreg, some suicidal behavior, unfortunate use of second person.

You don't leave Vietnam unscathed.

The wound burns for weeks, and you never bought into all the crap about Charlie's magic like some of the guys did, but you have seen enough to know that stranger things can happen, and you can't help but - well, not _worry,_ because you never worry, but you _do_ think about it. A lot. It doesn't help that drinking booze feels like setting your face on fire, and that booze is the one thing that helps you forget.

You end up lying on your left side in your one-man apartment, staring at a blank wall for hours because the doctors only give you so many pain meds and you're gonna need to make your current batch last. Two pills should've been enough for tonight. They're not. Each throb of pain, courtesy of something as automatic as your own damn heart, makes you remember, the remembering slowed down by the way the dark and your mind work together, against you, so that the instant slash of the bottle up your face takes a whole hour to happen in little snapshots.

The bottle catches your lip. _Throb._

The bottle hits your tooth with the smallest clink. You can already taste blood. _Throb._

Her face is contorted in fury - and for all you know she lost a brother or a daddy to you, or to Dr. Manhattan, or to any one of the dumbfuck dirty-faced soldiers you've met in your fifteen-month-long tour. The bottle cuts into your gums on its way up, which is a unique pain, so your focus all centers on the nick there instead of the jagged cut that's opening up your face. _Throb._

Ad nauseum, throb, sometimes to the point of feeling damn _skin cells_ separating. It's nuts, absolutely _nuts._ You've literally flayed a Vietnamese soldier, and this, _this_ is what keeps you up at night. Well. This and the pain, of course.

Sometimes you dream about it, the solid warmth of the gun, Dr. Fucking Manhattan saying your name, that bitch's tears all down her face, looking pregnant and beautiful and you want to fuck her (sometimes you wake up hard) and you want to kill her and you want to keep her alive just long enough for her to regret ever breaking that bottle.

Sometimes you dream it's Sal, her curls all damp with sweat, pleading in a language she probably ain't ever heard. She's always pregnant with Laurie - and in the dream you always know it, though it really doesn't matter.

Once, it's Laurie, smiling in the secret way she did in '66. When you wake from that one, you scramble for your pistol and have it halfway to your mouth before you remember that it was just a dream. It's then, staring down the thin barrel of the gun, that you consider that there are outside forces at work.

*

And anyway, haven't weirder things than that happened? Didn't they lock you up for a week when you ran into a base with dead skin on your shirt and six bullets missing from your gun and the word _zombie_ on your lips? Didn't you see him coming from half a mile off and hit your mark, didn't he keep coming, didn't he have holes where his eyes shoulda been and the left side of his jaw blown away, didn't the dead rise in a physical way that night, doesn't Dr. Manhattan live though he died, don't ghosts have their own means and motives, and, and, _fuck._

You crack open a 1924 Stolichnaya and drink until you can say with confidence that all that paranormal business is bullshit. The pain in your cheek is worth it.

*

There's this vendor on the street who's always selling dried foods. He wasn't there before 'Nam, not that you remember. He's obviously Vietnamese, always calling out to passerbys in that heavy accent, and when he curses to himself you know every word. You don't like him one bit, which you think is hilarious because you always got on pretty well with the gooks when you weren't killing them. You make a point of buying some jerky from him every day until he recognizes you on the street and calls out things like, "Mr. Eddie! I have fine meat for you today, top quality!" You act like his buddy, a loyal customer.

He knows you went to the war, though you've never told him and he doesn't know that you're the Comedian. You're pretty sure he knows you killed Qui and her little baby; not that he'd ever bring it up. He also knows that you'll kill him in a heartbeat, given the chance, though you haven't told him anything near that - he's quick to give you discounts and little extras, pushing dried fruits in your hands with the jerky and insisting that Mr. Eddie take it, it's a gift to such a good customer.

You keep a close eye on him.

*

After the wound's more or less healed, you walk the docks and streets in costume more often than you have since you were a kid. The government boys don't like it; it means they have a harder time looking you up, but you're fucking sick of those assholes always wanting petty jobs from you. They aren't giving you pain meds anymore, either, and maybe in your own petty way that's one of the main reasons you're giving them the slip.

Funny thing about the underworld, though, is that it's basically downgraded war games, and here the participants have a much better reaction when you haul out the good stuff. The government boys don't want you to kill people on the streets, though, so mostly you spend your time giving kids wicked scars and scaring the shit out of them.

Ozzy starts tailing you within a week, which is almost _cute_ (little fag) except he won't come out and talk to you, so you end up mistaking him for a ghost over and over again. You know he's looking for a fight, but apparently he wants to scare the crap out of you first, though he probably doesn't know that's what he's doing. Prick's probably "observing" you for the sake of understanding war, but if he'd just _ask_ he'd figure out that war's never _changed_ you; war _charges_ you, enhances you. You figure he'll get that soon enough and will quit shadowing you, the whisper of his cloak raising the hairs on the back of your neck.

More than once you turn towards his "hiding" place and unload a round of bullets, casually, with a smile. Each time you hope you'll hit him "on accident." Each time you miss.

Que sera sera.

*

Not two months after the war ends, a new gang starts to crop up. They call themselves the Viet Bronx, and you fucking _loathe_ every last one of them. They're all immigrants from 'Nam, and you know some of them gotta be Charlie, ex-members of the good ol' NVA. You know this because you never see them and they never go to jail - once, you run into Nite Owl and Rorschach and bring it up with them, expecting nothing. Rorschach tenses and opens and closes his hands like he wants to strangle something. Nite Owl explains that they've been trying to find some members, but that they're just so impossible to catch, even when you stumble right into them committing crimes.

You just laugh at them, and inform them that they might as well make some good luck charms and hope they don't run into the Viet Bronx anymore.

*

There's just more and more dinks showing up on the streets these days, as if now that the US owns their ruddy little country they can come _here._ You wonder why the fuck they've bothered to leave Cali, if they had to come to the States at all.

You invest in some good smokes, ones that are less tobacco and more a friendly symmetrical plant, and manage to ignore them.

When you go the army-issue doc and inform him that your face still hurts sometimes (at night, you don't mention, always at night), he tells you it's just phantom pain.

The government boys give you a warning for breaking his nose and some Vicodin for your trouble.

*

The vendor just up and disappears one day without warning. When you ask around, no one knows what the fuck you're talking about.

Your skin crawls until you're down seven shots and two joints, and then you are relaxed enough to only blink when Qui knocks on your door, hands you a package (sign here, please, Mr. Eddie), and walks off. You forget to ask how the baby is until she's long gone.

*

Your next investment is in acid, three tabs - one for you, one for Ozzy if he's willing to trip with you without making it all spiritual, and one for the road. That's what you need to get out of this weird limbo world, you decide - a nice long trip to take your mind off things. Hell, it was the first thing you did back from the Pacific, and you never got wounded then and you definitely never shacked up with a broad. You never dealt with anything like Manhattan, then, either. You've got a hunch that he messes people up, and you never _worry,_ of course, but you hope Laurie gets the heck outta Dodge sooner rather than later.

Turns out Ozzy doesn't want to trip with you, and when you mention how much time you've been spending together anyway he just gives you a Look, like he's not sure how to reply to that and is real damn happy about it.

You end up holing up in your apartment, listening to Frank Sinatra and sipping water as the room changes. An hour in, you snatch a loaf of bread out of your fridge and head down to Central Park to feed the ducks and hobos, which turns out to be a pretty terrible idea, because VC are crawling all over the place and Qui's waiting for you at a pond. She's sitting next to your kid, who looks real calm despite the fact he's turned inside out. He even knows your name, and that's where you draw the line, when your little inverted fetus-child looks up and calmly says how much he likes the duckies in America.

It's not so much a bad trip as a wake-up call. You stay in your apartment for five straight days. Nobody calls, which bothers you - doesn't anyone notice you're gone? - but there is a tapping on the door at night that's not so bad until midnight hits. That's when the baby starts crying, and Qui tries to hush him.

*

You don't drink for a while. You smoke cheap cigarettes. You consume fast food voraciously, because the smell of certain spices makes you feel sick.

You look up Hollis and stand outside of his shop a few hours, but you don't have anything to say to him.

You accept your next mission from the government, and follow it through with fervor.

*

A bump starts to grow on your stomach. You're getting fat, but you don't _get_ fat.

"You fucking bitch," you say, staring at yourself in the mirror. Qui, in your periphery, taps a broken bottle to her cheek. She's colorless.

Stranger things have happened, after all.

*

The Vicodin runs out way too fast, and you can't go into a doctor's office with some Vietnamese curse playing games with you. The best idea you've got is to sit at home and drink, maybe watch some TV. Ride this thing out. It's progressing very quickly; it's just been a week since you first noticed the bump and you already look so bloated that you couldn't go outside without drawing attention to yourself. The real kicker is that it _hurts like a bitch -_ it periodically feels like you're getting stabbed in the stomach over and over again, though the pain seems to happen at random.

At some point you realize you're running a fever, but you can't find the damn thermometer so you just curl up in the bath with ice floating around you. You stare at the impeccable white ceiling until the shakes get so bad that you knock your head against the faucet getting out.

You wake up sprawled on the linoleum floor and curse in five different languages, so loudly that a neighbor knocks on the front door and yells for you to shut the fuck up.

You respond in the most rational way you can think of: By following the dick into his room and shoving him out of his window. For a second you consider watching him fall, but you need some aspirin or something, and _now,_ so you just stagger back to your room.

*

The booze is all gone.

Fuck.

*

Two nights later, you have that dream again, the memory-dream that's all lit blue by Dr. Manhattan though he's not an actual person in the dream. Qui cuts your face, like she always does. This time you just feel tired and feverish, even the dream-you, but you still unhook the pistol from its holster and level it at her. She's beautiful. You want to put the gun down, not because you regret what you've done or because you care about her, but because you already know what happens next.

Which is odd. You've always had terrible foresight.

Before you shoot her, you wake up. The fever's making you feel thick and clumsy as you fumble for your gun, your movements disconnected from reality. The gun is cold as ice, so you just hold it against your scar for a minute, leeching what coolness you can from it. When it's warmer than your face feels, you press the gun against your stomach, holding it all wrong, like an amateur, which is odd - you've used guns since you were a tyke. You sigh and lean back. The gun goes off.

*

You wake up with a nurse's tits in your face.

"Nice rack, babe," you say, a little surprised at the statement. Been a while since you talked to a woman like that.

She actually giggles at you. _Stupid cunt,_ you think, but you dredge up a smile for her. Blonde waves like a porn star's roll over her shoulders, so you assume you're either dreaming or in heaven. Both are pretty funny, because you've never liked blondes. What a world.

You drift off again.

*

This time, you're out on the field, flanked by guys in standard army-issue fatigues. You recognize some of them. All boys who were killed in action.

A woman stands across the paddy, unarmed, completely at ease. You have a clear shot.

You smile, and you lift your gun.  



End file.
